Booker Prize for Fiction 2022 Shortlist Announced With 5 Nationalities, 6 Books

Booker Prize for Fiction 2022 shortlist.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

The Booker Prize for Fiction 2022 shortlist has been announced, representing five nationalities and a total of six books.

The oldest author in the list is Alan Garner, 87, with his book titled Treacle Walker. The shortest book on the list is Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan with a 116 pages between the covers.

While two authors hail from Europe, two are from the United States, one is from Africa and one comes from Asia.

The other shortlisted books include Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo, The Trees by Percival Everett, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, and Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout.

The winner will be announced on 17 October and will receive £50,000, while the other shortlisted authors will receive £2,500 each and a specially bound edition of their books.

Between them, the authors have published a combined total of over 75 works, including short stories, children’s stories, and poetry. Meanwhile, NoViolet Bulawayo has returned to the list with her second novel, Glory, after making the shortlist with her debut in 2013.

The judges, who read 169 books before shortlisting the six, include cultural historian, writer, and broadcaster Neil MacGregor, academic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari, historian Helen Castor, novelist and critic M John Harrison, and novelist, poet, and professor Alain Mabanckou.

MacGregor, who is chairing the judges' panel, was quoted as saying, “The Booker Prize is to take a moment to pause and marvel at what the English language can do, at what you can do with words. There is a concern that English has become the dominant language of the world. But if there’s anything we have discovered in our judging, it’s that there are so many Englishes. The tyranny of the language has been overcome by all the different Englishes of the world, used by writers to explore what’s happening to them and the world around them.”